A cool-season leafy herb with lacy foliage and a mild anise-and-parsley flavor, best sown where spring and fall stay damp and shaded.
Anthriscus cerefolium · also called French parsley, Garden chervil
Windows are counted from the average date of your last spring frost.
Chervil is one of the few herbs that prefers shade and cool soil, so it fills beds where basil and rosemary sulk. Its delicate flavor fades in drying, which makes homegrown leaves far better than anything on a shelf.
A little history. Native to the Caucasus and southeastern Europe and grown in kitchen gardens since Roman times. It forms a slender taproot, which is why seedlings resent being moved.
Sow seeds ⅛ inch (3 mm) deep, and aim for 6 inches (15 cm) between plants once thinned. Press seed into the surface and barely cover — about ⅛ inch. Keep the top half-inch damp until sprouts show; do not let it crust. Seedlings emerge in 7–21 days.
Water every 2–3 days in warm weather; never let the bed dry out. Water when the top inch of soil feels dry to the fingertip. Aim for about 1 inch per week including rain.
Once at sowing; a light feed after the first cutting. What to use: compost worked into the bed, or a dilute fish-and-seaweed liquid feed.
Pinch out flower stalks as soon as they rise from the center — leaf production stops once the plant flowers. Cut plants back by half to force a fresh flush.
It's ready when plants are 4–6 inches tall with several fully divided true leaves (the lacy leaves that follow the first narrow seed leaves), roughly 6–8 weeks after sowing. Cut whole outer stems at the base with scissors, taking no more than a third of the plant at once. Work from the outside in so the center keeps producing.
Wrap cut stems in a damp towel in a bag in the refrigerator for 3–5 days. Flavor is at its peak within hours of cutting.
Sow a short row every 2–3 weeks through spring and again from late summer; each planting yields well for about a month before bolting.
Late-summer sowings hold through winter under a cold frame or row cover in mild areas, resuming growth early in spring before flowering.
Endive
Endive's broad rosettes shade the soil surface, which keeps chervil's roots cool and damp and often delays bolting through late spring. Both crops want the same cool, evenly moist bed, so one watering serves them.
Cilantro
Both are quick cool-season herbs that bolt at similar times, and the small white and pale flower umbrellas they throw feed hoverflies, lacewings, and tiny parasitic wasps that hunt aphids. Let a few plants of each flower at the row end.
Sweet Cicely
Sweet cicely is a tall perennial that casts light dappled shade all summer, the kind of cool footing chervil needs to keep making leaves. Sow chervil on its shaded side rather than under the crown, where roots compete.
Lettuce
Interplanted lettuce and chervil shade the soil between them and hold moisture, which suits two crops that both quit in heat. Harvest cadence matches, so the bed clears at once.
Radish
Radishes swell just below the surface and come out in a month, while chervil sends a slender taproot deeper, so the two rarely fight for water. Pulling radishes also loosens the row without disturbing chervil crowns.
Fennel
Fennel roots release compounds that reliably stunt most garden vegetables, and small seedlings like chervil suffer most. Grow fennel well apart in its own corner, where its flowers still feed hoverflies and tiny parasitic wasps.
Dill
Dill is a carrot-family relative that hosts the same caterpillars and leaf diseases as chervil, so planting them shoulder to shoulder stacks the risk. Tall dill also out-competes low chervil for light and water.
Peppermint
Mint spreads by runners and will overrun a low, short-lived herb like chervil within a season. Keep mint in its own sunken pot or a separate bed.
Give the carrot family 3 years away from this spot before any of its relatives return.
The pea and bean family, the cabbage family or the onion family thrive in this ground next season.
A light feeder that takes little from the bed and leaves only fine roots behind. Keep carrot-family crops — carrots, parsley, dill, celery, parsnip — out of this ground for 3 years. Peas or beans, cabbage-family greens, or onions and garlic all follow well.
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